


Calm and Steady

by guardian_chaos



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Friendship, Gen, Hugs, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardian_chaos/pseuds/guardian_chaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, words just get in the way. Takes place following The Reichenbach Fall. Involves a gratuitous hug scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calm and Steady

John Watson battles to fill his lungs up enough to keep going. He is tired, weighed down by the grocery bags in his hands, and is indescribably cold. Teeth chattering, he pushes through the door to 221B Baker Street and mounts the steps. The snowy midnight air disappears behind shut doors, and only his own, heavy steps up the stairs break the silence in the house. Mrs. Hudson, as he knows, is already sleeping, for it is rather late.

His right leg pulses with terrible shocks, and his left shoulder---former resting grounds for a flesh-tearing bullet---throbs hotly. The plastic bags in his hands crinkle and complain when he throws them on the floor of his flat and hurls himself, facedown, onto his couch. A sore misery pervades his body, and today? Yes, today is one of the bad days.

Blindly, he fumbles on the coffee table for the TV remote, intending to block out everything under a soothing blanket of inane white noise. His knuckles bump into something fabric and stiff, a clinking noise ringing out as something inside the bag shifts. John peers sidelong from the couch at the bag, his heart skipping a noticeable beat in his chest.

He has never seen this bag before. It is dark green and tattered, stains and frayed edges making up every corner, and is about the size of a standard airline carry-on. John sits up from the couch, swinging his legs so that his feet touch the floor. Inside the bag, there is a mobile, which John flips open with his hand trembling ever so slightly. He looks around his apartment, but sees nothing out of place. No strange noises confront him, either. It's just him, John Watson, and this mystery bag.

In the mobile's messages out folder, there is a single text:

_They are gone. I'm coming back. ~SH_

Lightning races across John's chest and arms, and suddenly he can't breathe. He is up from the couch and standing faster than he is consciously aware, his feet knocking over his carelessly laid groceries. Tea boxes spill out of a bag, bashing across the floor as John comes to an abrupt, panicky stop and looks up.

A pale, dark-haired figure stands in front of him, tall and a bit worrisomely thin. The man's hands are shoved deep in his pockets and his hair is wild and too long, but he is immediately recognizable to the crisis reactions being shot through John's brain.

"John," Sherlock steps closer, a tense yet, frankly, relieved smile playing with his eyes, "I know this is unexpected. Allow me to--"

Gravity knocks itself over like water thrown from a bucket. Feeling the world spin, John crushes tea boxes under his chest when he collapses, unconscious, on the floor.

* * *

The scent of warm sugar and toasted bread greets John when he wakes up an hour or so later, feeling disarmingly comfortable. A familiar coat has been draped across his chest and his head is propped up by a throw pillow.

"What---ah!" John throws the coat off and jumps from the couch, upsetting a lamp. The lamp crashes with a spray of wild light and tumbles off to the side. "Sherlock." John stumbles to the kitchen. "Sherlock!"

Sherlock's wide, quicksilver eyes peer from behind the doorway, followed by the graceful accompaniment of the rest of his lanky form. "John." His face looks pinched on all sides, lines of tension at the corners of his eyes. "You're awake. I tried to--"

"You daft git!" John grabs Sherlock's bony shoulders and shoves him backwards, hard. Sherlock's back hits the refrigerator, raining magnets and bits of note paper to the ground. "You're supposed to be dead!" Sherlock grunts in pain and clutches John's arm. The frying pan he had been holding clatters to the ground, spilling scrambled eggs everywhere.

"As it appears that I am not," Sherlock grapples with John and manages to force him into a chair at the kitchen table, "kindly stop trying to make me so!" He leans over John's chair, his breath brushing against John's hair. The arm he is using to prop himself up against the back of the chair casts body heat over John's shoulder. "Now, listen, I---"

"You are a horrible person, Sherlock!" John grabs the front of Sherlock's shirt and puts his forehead against Sherlock's chest. Sherlock's heart is beating rapidly, his lungs drawing in violent breaths of air. He smells vaguely of sweat and feels overly warm, no traces of the expensive colognes he had once been fond of. "Three years! Three years, and you didn't say anything---not one word!"

Sherlock's arms shift stiffly to wrap around John's back. He lays his chin across John's shoulder and swallows. John feels nervous tension all over Sherlock when the detective says, "I'm so sorry. It had to be done this way. So much was at stake. I do not regret my choice, but I do regret that---"

"Shut up." John tangles his arms around Sherlock's spine, feeling the pronounced vertebrae grind up against his wrists. "You're an idiot if you think you're not going to explain later, but just...for now...shut up. Just shut up, Sherlock."

Sherlock stills, as impossible a feat as a man coming back from the dead is generally considered to be. As they rest there and breathe, John's other senses drift into play. It's still night, streetlights glimmering through the windows, and the room smells like sugar and warm bread because Sherlock had warmed up some biscuits and made tea. Sherlock's chest feels strange and awkwardly placed, the taller man hunched at a bent angle to stay in John's arms, but he is warm and breathing and he even stinks a little.

John shifts his nose out of Sherlock's shirt and takes a deep breath of air. "Oh god, Sherlock, you need a shower. What have you been---"

Sherlock sinks to his knees, his arms still tight around John's back. John is pulled down with him, arms still around Sherlock's waist as Sherlock buries his face in John's side. A pervasive trembling runs through the detective's back, his fingers curling into fists holding the back of John's shirt. He makes a noise that sounds like the beginning of a word, or maybe a string of words, but is too muddled to make out, and then he goes silent and just shakes.

John feels his eyes start to burn and he blinks furiously to contain the tears springing up in them. The flat plane of Sherlock's back is laying across his knees, clothed in a dress shirt that looks like it's been beaten to hell and back. John lays his head on Sherlock's shoulder blade and feels all of the tension in his body pool away. He holds loosely onto Sherlock's fragile waist as Sherlock clutches him back, a living man with a pulse and life and, for once, no words to describe his experiences. Instead, those experiences are laid out in the bones of his back, the damage to his clothes, and the sweat marking his body.

They sit there for a long time, their eyes shut and their arms closed as their tea, not important to either one of them, slowly drains of its heat and becomes cold.

In the silence, sunrise brightens the windows, as calm and as steady as anything will ever be.

 

~1/31/2012


End file.
